The power of affiliate marketing
Even though affiliate marketing has been around forever (used to be called Revenue Sharing) the internet has made it much more powerful and effective! Many of the internet giants of today like Amazon, Yahoo and Google used affiliate marketing to get them where they are today! Now 90% of the successful companies online use affiliate marketing as the back bone of their marketing plan.
Online merchants enjoy the many advantages affiliate marketing. It is a trouble free way to create an army of well trained and highly motivated sales reps in a very short time, at virtually no cost. There are no interviews required in the hiring process. The training is completed online and if the arrangement does not work out, the relationship is dissolved without conflict.
This type of marketing is very beneficial to the affiliate for many of the same reasons. There is no interview process to endure. There are no products to purchase. You can work from home. You are in control of your time and your income potential. Many affiliates make multiple six figure incomes on virtual auto pilot!
How does it work? An affiliate goes to a merchant’s website and signs up as an affiliate by simply filling out a 5 minute computer generated form. The new affiliate is then provided with their Affiliate Tools which usually includes some banner ads, online training and an affiliate link (a URL encoded with the affiliate info and directed to the merchant’s site) this is used as a tracking tool; if a customer arrives at the merchants site via this link and makes a purchase or clicks on an ad (depending on the agreement). If the customers do not use the affiliate link to reach the merchants site, the affiliate will not get credit for the sales/clicks he/she generates.
Most companies pay a pre determined commission to the affiliate when a customer purchases a product. Other companies pay a flat rate commission to the affiliate when a customer clicks on an ad on their site. This is called a cost-per-click remuneration system an is only used by about 1% of the companies.
A variety of techniques are used by the top affiliate marketers to generate and send leads to the merchant sites. Although the explanation of this process is out of the scope of this article, I will do my best to sum it up. Basically, new customers or leads are drawn to the affiliate’s site via an ad or in an email. The affiliate’s site (usually a blog) then filters and redirects the customers (via the affiliate link) to the merchant’s site. Many other kinds of on-line communication tools are also used to direct targeted traffic to the merchant’s site.
This was just a brief overview. There is a lot more to this business. It takes some time to set up but it is worth it. For both the Affiliate and the Merchant this style of marketing is win / win. No costs are incurred by either the Merchant or the Affiliate. The sign up (hiring process) is free for both merchant and stress free for the affiliate (no intervies process). Training is done online which is economical for both the merchant and the affiliate. Placing links and banners on the affiliate’s site is free and the merchant only pays the affiliate if and when a sale is made
Affiliate marketing is hands down the best way to grow a business! I believe there is also no better way to make money online (or offline for that matter) than Affiliate Marketing!
